What's changed

A new section, just below "Help me figure out". Enter the last month you would work and press the button: it re-runs your whole plan with you leaving then and lists what changes, side by side with working to your planned date. That covers your retirement type (an immediate retirement can become deferred), the pension and when it starts, the FERS supplement, FEHB and FEGLI in retirement, Social Security, your TSP at the date you would have retired, health premiums, early-withdrawal penalties and the savings left at the end. Then it adds it all up into the walk-away number: the money you would need in hand today to quit then and still end the plan as well off, plus the lottery jackpot (cash option, before tax) that would cover it. If quitting would cost you FEHB, it prices replacement health cover instead of treating it as free, and you can change that cost.

It gives two numbers. Quit and still pay every bill is what you would need so the plan keeps paying your bills, even if your savings run down to nothing by the end (often $0 if you have saved well). Quit and come out the same also leaves you the same savings at the end as working to your date. Federal employees can tick Offered a VERA and add a VSIP buyout: if you qualify on that date (age 50 with 20 years, or 25 years at any age) the quit path becomes an immediate, unreduced retirement that keeps FEHB; if you don't, it says so.

In a year with any paychecks the calculator assumes that year's pay is spent, and a VSIP buyout or an annual leave lump sum paid in that same year was swept in with it and disappeared after tax. Both are now saved, net of their own tax.

A new page, fedretirecalc.com/buyback, works out the FERS military service deposit: what it costs (3% of your military basic pay, plus interest once the interest-free window closes), what it buys (a bigger pension, often an earlier unreduced retirement date, and a bigger survivor annuity), and the rule that settles it for military retirees. If you don't have your earnings statement yet, it can estimate your basic pay from your grades and dates using the real historical pay tables.

The FERS section has a new Military service, deposit paid field. Years entered there count toward your pension and toward regular retirement eligibility (MRA+30, 60+20), but not toward the FERS supplement, the 5-year civilian minimum, or the 20 or 25 years for law enforcement, firefighter and air traffic controller retirement. It starts at 0, so nothing changes unless you fill it in.

On the buyback page, the military retiree answer now counts what waiving actually takes away. VA compensation continues, so for a rating under 50% only the retired pay DFAS actually sends is lost. CRDP and CRSC end with the waiver. A FERS survivor annuity suspends SBP and its premiums. The comparison also runs to age 85, because retired pay keeps full cost-of-living raises and the FERS pension does not. You can also now pay the deposit by payroll deduction and see the payoff date and interest.

Asked for by a reader. Once you enter a military pension or VA disability, two new fields appear. Military SBP: the 6.5% premium now comes off your retired pay before tax until it is paid up (the later of 30 years of premiums and age 70), and your spouse gets 55% of the base amount for life. VA DIC: enter what your spouse would get if your death qualifies (the 2026 base rate is one click); it is tax-free, and it no longer reduces SBP. Both show up as their own lines in the survivor scenario. For a FERS retiree, the survivor card now also prices the 50%, 25% and no-survivor elections against the SBP and DIC your spouse would get anyway, and shows the one thing that often decides it: with no FERS survivor annuity, your spouse loses FEHB.

On narrow screens the person card was wider than the screen, so its right side was cut off. It now fits, and rows of three or four fields show two per line.

FERS pays no annuity of any kind until you have 5 years of civilian service; leaving earlier gets a refund of your retirement contributions instead (5 U.S.C. 8410). The calculator was showing a small pension payable at 62.

The morning's fix taught the simulation to count a history as a success only when every bill gets paid — but the on-page Run 1,000 futures button had its own copy of the counting loop, and that copy still only asked whether a balance survived. The recheck caught a 100% on a plan that paid none of its bills. There is now exactly one definition of “the plan works”, shared by the headline verdict, the simulation, the survivor note and every scenario table. Also: typing 0% volatility now means 0%, not the 15% default.

When a spouse or widow(er) on a worker's record also has their own retirement benefit, Social Security pays their own benefit first and only the excess comes off the worker's record — and only that excess counts against the family maximum (20 CFR 404.403(a)(5), the Parisi rule). The projection was charging the full spousal or widow's amount, which squeezed the children's benefits for money the record was never going to pay. Children's benefits are also now included in the “When should you claim?” comparison, since the claim age changes how much room is left for them.

The tips section told anyone claiming before 70 that waiting would raise the check “and lift the survivor benefit the other would inherit.” For the lower earner of a couple that second half is simply untrue, and with children on the other spouse's record filing early can be the better move. The tip now re-runs your plan at 62, full retirement age and 70 and speaks only when another age beats yours by real money — in whichever direction — and mentions the survivor benefit only for the spouse with the larger record.

The whole tips list was held to one rule — a tip names something to fix and says what it is worth, worked out on your plan. What changed: the long-term-care tip is now a stress test (three years in a nursing home at the 2025 national median of about $115,000 a year) and speaks only if that breaks a plan that otherwise works; the Medicare IRMAA tip fires when you are just over a tier and says what trimming would save, instead of when you are merely near one; the survivor tip speaks only when the survivor's bills actually go unpaid; the no-survivor-annuity tip quotes the cost and the benefit; the percentage-versus-bills tip says how much more the other model would leave; and the “unused bracket room” tip is gone, replaced by the ladder tip that does the arithmetic. One tip was also simply wrong after the morning's change — it said savings “make up the gap” in a lean year when a gap now means the bill went unpaid.

A ladder that was switched on and working used to earn a tip congratulating it, while a plan with no ladder got a general “consider modelling one.” That is backwards. A working ladder now earns no tip; a ladder that as configured raises lifetime tax earns a warning; and with no ladder modelled the tip runs one for you (12%, 22% and 24% brackets, from retirement to the year before required distributions) and tells you what the best of them would save.

The ladder panel said things like “your plan runs to 113” — the older spouse's would-be age in the year the younger one reaches the horizon. It now names the year and whose age it is (“runs to 2085, Pat's age 100”). The numbers did not change.

A spouse drawing the child-in-care benefit who then files on their own record late in the year was being short-changed for that one year: the engine compared full-year amounts, so a December filer lost eleven months of benefit either way — and it made filing at 62 look worse than not filing at all. The switch is now made month by month. In the “When should you claim?” analysis, ties are also now shown as ties: more than one green cell when claim ages are within $500 or 0.1% of each other, grey when the claim age makes no difference, and the summary says so instead of naming an arbitrary winner.

With the fixed-percentage withdrawal model, a conversion in a year before withdrawals begin (say, pension only at 64) had no way to pay its own tax, so the new “every bill paid” test marked that year unpaid and sank the whole Monte Carlo to 0% on one deterministic year. Nobody means to leave a conversion's tax unpaid: the engine now draws exactly enough from savings to cover it, leaving the household's cash where it would have been with no conversion. Years without a conversion keep the exact percentage schedule.

A child's benefit, the child-in-care caregiver benefit and the spousal excess all begin the month the worker's claim begins. A September claim was paying a full year of each. The spousal excess in particular starts when the later of the two spouses files.

The withdrawal that pays a conversion's own tax comes out of the same traditional balance, and a large conversion could push the two past what was there — the account went negative and the display's zero floor hid it, so the balances stopped adding up. Conversions are now capped at what actually fits.

Morning's fix took pre-tax deferrals out of taxable wages. Roth deferrals correctly stay taxable, but they still left the paycheck — the projection was treating them as both saved and spendable. Likewise an HSA contribution made after you stop working has to come out of savings, and now does.

One spouse's RMD was being split pro-rata across both people's balances. It is now reserved from the obligated owner first. And the routine that sizes a bills-model withdrawal to cover its own tax stopped after six passes, which on a $100,000-a-year budget in a high-tax state could leave a few dollars unpaid — enough to trip the new strict “every bill paid” test. It now iterates to convergence.

The 1.7% special-provisions formula now applies only to a retirement actually taken under the special provisions (or an early-out) — a law-enforcement officer leaving under MRA+10 or at 62 with 5 years gets the standard formula. And an MRA+10 retiree with 20+ years who postpones to 60 is unreduced from 60, not 62. A reviewer also asserted that unused sick leave cannot count toward the 20-year test for the 1.1% factor; OPM's Benefits Administration Letter 18-103 says it can, so that rule stays as it was.

I ran this calculator through an independent automated code review against the primary sources (SSA, OPM, IRS). It confirmed most of the engine, and it found genuine errors — several inherited from the original calculators, where they had sat unnoticed the whole time. Everything below shipped together, and every fix now has its own permanent regression test.

The survivor annuity is the elected share of your unreduced pension (OPM's rule). The projection was applying it to the pension after the survivor-election cost, so a $33,000 pension with a full election paid the survivor $14,850 instead of the correct $16,500.

RMDs now begin at each person's own applicable age — 73 if you were born 1951–1959, 75 if 1960 or later (SECURE 2.0) — and divide the prior 31 December balance, not the balance after the current year's growth. Both errors overstated RMDs, which also overstated what a Roth conversion ladder saves you.

A spouse keeps their own benefit (with its own reduction or delayed credits) and adds the spousal excess, each part reduced by its own rules — the old “larger of the two” shortcut erased delayed-retirement credits and could pay the wrong amount in either direction. The child-in-care caregiver benefit is likewise a top-up above your own benefit, never stacked on top of it in full. And a widow(er)'s age reduction now locks at the age the benefit starts instead of quietly melting away — with one correct subtlety kept: years on a caregiver benefit don't count against the widow reduction, so switching at your own full retirement age still gets the widow benefit unreduced.

With the fixed-percentage withdrawal model, the schedule can leave bills uncovered for years while savings sit in the bank — and the green banner still said your savings cover your bills. The verdict now says plainly when the schedule doesn't release enough money, and the Monte Carlo success rate counts a history as a success only when every bill gets paid, not merely when a balance survives.

Traditional TSP/401(k)/457 deferrals, deductible IRA contributions and payroll HSA contributions come out of the wage base before income tax — the projection was taxing gross salary. Working-year taxes drop, most visibly when one of you still works while the other draws.

The “bills plus a cushion” amount was read and then ignored — it is now real spending the draw covers. The Social Security estimate built from an earnings record was dropping your entire final working year (and is now recomputed from the record on every change, so the detail panel and the projection can never disagree). And in Monte Carlo, a market loss in the after-tax account was quietly credited 15% back as if the IRS refunds losses in the year they happen — down years now cost their full amount.

Everything the old version did for one person, plus a whole household: you and a spouse on one tax return, one pot of savings, survivor planning, a bill planner, a Roth conversion ladder, Health Savings Accounts, a “help me decide” section for the hard calls, and where-to-retire comparisons. Your saved plan carried itself over the first time this page opened; nothing needed downloading. The previous version was kept intact and can be restored in minutes if something serious turns up.

Tick “Add market uncertainty” above the savings chart, choose how bumpy you think markets are, and press Run. Every one of the 1,000 futures runs through the complete plan, the same taxes, withdrawals, required distributions and survivor rules as the main projection, so a bad market decade landing exactly when you start withdrawing, the thing a fixed-rate projection cannot show, is genuinely in there. You get the number that matters, how many of those futures last to the end of your plan, plus a 10th-to-90th percentile band around the savings line. The median future sits on the line you already know, because your expected return is treated as the long-run compound rate. Same inputs always produce the same band. Prompted by comparing notes with a reader’s own Monte Carlo spreadsheet.

They did their job. The preview address now shows the main page, which is the same thing it previewed.

Leave federal service before your Minimum Retirement Age and the annuity is deferred, normally to 60 or 62. The pension section said so, but the projection started paying it at your separation date anyway. Someone leaving at 50 was shown ten years of pension they would not receive. It now begins on your birthday in the year it becomes payable, and the first year is part-year. A survivor annuity is also no longer paid if the employee dies before the deferred annuity ever begins, which in real life is a refund of contributions instead.

It made every early withdrawal penalty-free. A 72(t) SEPP only covers one fixed payment a year, worked out once and held for the longer of five years or until 59½. Draw more than that and the extra is penalised and the arrangement is broken retroactively, putting the 10% back on everything already taken. The box now calculates your actual payment, shows it in dollars per year and per month, and penalises anything above it. If your plan needs more than the payment allows, it says so.

The Medicare Part B premium is added automatically at 65, so a premium left inside a single living-costs line was counted twice from 65 on. The bills section now says this, and explains that the medical tick is for out-of-pocket costs like dental, vision and copays, which is what an HSA is allowed to pay.

Where a label wrapped onto two lines, the box under it sat lower than its neighbours. Cosmetic only.

Unticking the married box cleared your survivor annuity election, which is right, but ticking it again never put the election back, and the zero was then saved over your real answer with nothing on screen to say so. For a federal retiree that quietly removes a survivor annuity and a spouse's income for life. The election is now set aside and handed back, and it survives a reload.

It was booked in the year you separate. In federal service the payment goes out in a later pay period, and a December separation is never processed before January, which is precisely why so many people leave at the very end of December. The lump now falls into the next tax year instead of stacking on top of a full year of salary. On a $150,000 salary with 568 hours, that is about $3,800 less tax across the two years.

Balance and yearly contribution per person. It pays Medicare Part B, the IRMAA surcharge and any bill you tag as medical, tax-free, before the plan works out what to withdraw, so it lowers the withdrawal and the tax rather than just the bill. Contributions stop at 65 because Medicare ends eligibility, the 55-plus catch-up is per person, and a surviving spouse inherits it as their own.

A conversion is not free. Tick this and its tax is counted with your bills rather than disappearing into the year's tax line, so a conversion year reads as what it is, a large bill you chose to pay. Nothing about the plan changes, only where the money is counted.

A stacked chart of where each year's money comes from, with a line showing what survives tax and bills. Social Security and pensions are shown per person rather than merged, so you can see whose benefit starts when and how far the survivor drops.

Every hover label on every chart read "Retirement Estimator" instead of the figures. A publishing step was overwriting them.

The places you added were dropped both when loading your file into the new version and when saving a plan to move it to another device. They now travel with both.

Every test case had retired at 62, which hid them. The FERS cost-of-living adjustment was running from your retirement date rather than from 62. The special retirement supplement was being increased for inflation when it is a fixed amount. Under an early-out the supplement was being paid before you reach your Minimum Retirement Age. And it stopped on a year boundary instead of running through your birthday month.

The Rule of 55 was tested against your age on the day you left rather than the calendar year you leave, which penalised a January exit by someone turning 55 that year. The IRA contribution limit was showing 2024 figures; 2026 is $7,500 with a $1,100 catch-up at 50 or over. A FERS disability annuity was paying a full twelve months in its first year. And "PIA at full retirement age" was displayed inflated to your claim year, reading about 8% high for someone claiming at 70.

For the decisions that are genuinely hard. When should a much younger spouse claim Social Security, given that the survivor benefit may replace their own? Is taking an early-out now better than staying to your planned date? What does a disabled child end up with? Each one sweeps the choice against a range of death ages and reports the break-even.

A 457(b) has its own contribution limit on top of your main plan and no early-withdrawal penalty once you separate, which matters a lot if you go before 55. Outside IRA balances and contributions are separate fields. And each person's card shows a countdown to their retirement date with working days remaining, holidays and leave deducted.

Compare states and 150 cities on income tax, property tax and cost of living, including the state-tax column on a conversion ladder. The ladder itself shows the tax and IRMAA cost year by year with a break-even.

Monthly amounts were being read as yearly ones. A one-time cost such as a new roof was also being charged every year instead of once.

Added as an option, along with a fix to age-50 access for special-category employees: law enforcement, firefighters and air traffic controllers.

The projection showed no withdrawals at all in that case. It also projected your balance to your Social Security claim age rather than the age you actually start drawing.

A "when can I actually go?" search that finds your earliest workable date. Health Savings Accounts. TSP and outside IRA balances split into separate fields. A printable report you can save as a PDF. How much of your income does not depend on the market. A projection horizon informed by life expectancy. An optional Social Security trust-fund stress test. And a phone layout that no longer scrolls sideways.